Windows 10 Insiders Fast Ring build 14951 out for Mobile and PC

Another week, another Insider Fast Ring update because it’s apparently weekly now. Build 14951 brings us some improvements in the Photos app, further refinements for the touchpad (been a theme for the past few Fast Ring updates), and a lot more.

The closer we get to Redstone 2, the better it seems to be. Hopefully, we will get a proper glimpse at it all during the October 26th event, and perhaps some good news from the Office team for Windows 10 at the November 2nd event.

For now, let’s focus on Build 14951 – we got better inking support, camera & photos app updates, with a massive update for the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Let’s get through all of it.

For the PC

This week’s build focuses on touch and touchpad – with the new and improved inking support and further refinements to the touchpad customization that was introduced in the past few builds, it’s continuing on the work done so far – as expected.

Keyboard shortcuts for gestures – The keyboard shortcut section that was disabled in last week’s update have been enabled in this build; you can now find this at Settings > Devices > Touchpad > Other gestures > Advanced gestures > Custom keyboard shortcuts.
Once you press the button, you will be presented with a recorder – you can press any key combinations and map them to a gesture.

Touchpad refinements – Under ‘Other gestures’ you now have the option to change audio volume with a gesture, and the reset button now properly reacts to a click with a progress circle and a checkmark when it is finished.
There are a few bug fixes and minor improvements related to the touchpad as well; you can find them in the section below.

Improvements for Windows Ink – Windows Ink is receiving a whole lot of love in this update. Here’s what’s new:

Pen dropdowns in Windows Ink Workspace now let you change the width and color of your brush without going through a menu.

Once you have made adjustments to your pen, you can go straight to drawing, and the dropdown will close itself – weird it took this long for this to be added, seems pretty obvious.

Stencils have been introduced to Windows Ink, the new protractor tool combines a compass and protractor into one. You can use the standard pinch-to-zoom gesture to change the size of the protractor, and a arc degree readout will follow your pen, mouse or finger as you draw along the protractor.

The ruler now shows a numerical value of the angle for degree values.

Photos get some Ink – The Photos app has been updated in this build as well, the version is bumped to 16.1017.10000.0, and it brings inking to your photos. You can read more about this in detail over here; it’s pretty amazing.

Narrator refinements – Further refinements to Windows Narrator fix multiple issues with continuous reading for tables on web pages. The Caps Lock + W reading experience has been fixed as well, so dialogs are read correctly.

Camera revamps – The camera app has gone through a revamp, both PC and Mobile versions have been updated. You can read more about this in detail over here.
If you have a Surface Book, Surface Pro 4, Surface Pro 3 or Surface 3; this update will add ‘Living Images’ for you – this feature was introduced by Nokia in their Lumia devices back in the day, but now Microsoft is integrating it into the Camera app.

For the developers – you don’t have to reboot your PC after turning out Developer Mode anymore. Simply let the Windows Developer Mode package install, and get to work.

An issue introduced in Build 14946 causing large games such as Forza Horizons 3, Gears of War 4, ReCore, etc. to crash on launch have been fixed, these games should work properly now.

Devices capable of Connected Standby such as Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 should not bugcheck (bluescreen) anymore.

Fixed an issue resulting in Forza Horizon 3, Gears of War (and some 3rd party games) failing to install from the Store with the error code 0x80073cf9 when the system’s app install location was set to drive with native 4k Sectors (or 4k sector sized drive).

The migration logic has been updated to include custom scan code mappings. That means that going forward from this build, if you’ve used Registry Editor to remap certain keys (for example, Caps Lock key to null), that change will persist across upgrades.

An issue that resulted in the console window (that hosts Command Prompt, PowerShell and other command-line utilities) not snapping correctly to the inside edges between two monitors due to different DPI scaling has been fixed.

All agenda items in the taskbar ‘Clock and Calendar’ menu were showing up in the calendar’s primary color rather than matching their respective calendar’s color. This has been fixed.

The Groove music app should no longer crash if you try to reorder songs in a large playlist.

An issue causing the ‘Add PIN’ button to be disabled for domain-joined devices under Settings > Accounts > Sign-In Options has been fixed.

Fixed an issue resulting in .csv or .xlsx files downloaded from Microsoft Edge sometimes unexpectedly appearing to be locked for editing by “another user” when SmartScreen was enabled.

An odd one – some Insiders have experienced an issue causing Adobe Photoshop Express to crash, after clicking the ‘correct’ button when trying to edit a cropped image. This issue has been fixed.

Fixed an issue where enabling the RemoteFX adapter for a Virtual Machine would result in it failing to power on with the error ‘Unspecified error’ (0x80004005).

Known Issues

Some users might face a crash while using the new protractor tool in Sketchpad – a fix is in the works.

Just like Build 14946, 3rd party antivirus programs such as BitDefender, Kaspersky, F-Secure, and Malwarebytes might make the system unstable or unusable – if any of these are installed, your PC might roll-back during the upgrade process. Uninstalling them, and installing them again after upgrading to this build might break things and make your system unstable.

Signing into apps such as Feedback Hub, Groove, MSN News, etc. with your Microsoft Account if you sign out or get signed out of these apps will not work. If this happens to you and you cannot sign in to Feedback Hub, you can send feedback via the Microsoft forums.

For Mobile

Mobile isn’t getting a lot of new features, so the list is pretty short here. A few users are also reporting that they are unable to upgrade to this build, more about that under Known Issues. Here’s what’s new:

Camera revamp – The camera app has gone through a revamp, both PC and Mobile versions have been updated. You can read more about this in detail over here.
Mobile is getting the bigger part of this update obviously, including some significant performance improvements.

Minor Fixes & Improvements

The Camera shutter sound entry was missing under Settings > Personalization > Sounds, this has been fixed.

After some feedback discussing French punctuation rules, the French keyboards (with the exception of French (Canada)) have been updated. The keyboard will now add a space both before and after when using two-part punctuation marks, such as the semi-colon, the colon, the question mark and the exclamation mark.

Known Issues

Signing into apps such as Feedback Hub, Groove, MSN News, etc. with your Microsoft Account if you sign out or get signed out of these apps will not work. If this happens to you and you cannot sign in to Feedback Hub, you can send feedback via the Microsoft forums.

This issue was also present in Build 14946 last week, but wasn’t known at the time. Some users have reported that rebooting their device would cause it to be “stuck” on the blue Windows logo – do not reset your device if this happens. This problem is only temporary and causes an unexpectedly long boot time; depending on the device you have, it should progress to the lock screen in 20-30 minutes.

Users who have set a data limit on their network connection might receive frequent – and false – notifications about having exceeded it. To fix this issue, browse Settings > Device & Network > Data Usage and re-create your data limit settings, or remove them all together.

Excel Mobile will freeze after adding sheets and eventually crashes.

Some users are reporting that their devices are getting stuck at 0% while downloading the new build. Microsoft is asking users to look at this forum post for feedback and updates.

That’s it, folks

That’s all for this Insider Fast Ring update. As always, as an Insider, you are expected to provide your valuable feedback so bugs can be squashed before they creep into slower releases.

If you can’t submit feedback via the Feedback Hub due to the known issue in this update, you can still send your feedback via the Microsoft forums.

You can read more about this update at Microsoft’s blog if you think this post wasn’t enough.